State Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara, left, called on lawmakers to approve a measure that would ban random drug testing for public school students during a news conference held in Sacramento, Calif., Wednesday, June 23, 2004.

Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, AP

State Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara, left, called on...

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Assemlyman John Vasconcellows arrives for funeral of Rep. Leo Ryan, at All Souls Catholic Church, South San Francisco. Photo by Jerry Telfer

Photo: Jerry Telfer, Sfc

Assemlyman John Vasconcellows arrives for funeral of Rep. Leo Ryan,...

The late John Vasconcellos, who served 38 years in the California Legislature, did not take offense when it was suggested he might be unelectable in modern politics.

He knew the insult was to a system that increasingly rewarded risk aversion, facades, fear, fundraising skill and triviality. He carried none of those traits.

Vasconcellos, who died Saturday at 82, was never afraid of mockery. In fact, he relished the attention to his cause when the Doonesbury comic strip lampooned his 1986 bill creating a task force to promote self-esteem and personal and social responsibility.

The South Bay Democrat could be candid to the point of being evangelical about the way New Age thinking helped him conquer his demons of anger management and salvaged his personal and professional life. He often followed up one of our lively lunchtime conversations about the state of California politics by sending me a paperback or two on some aspect of human potential.

Vasconcellos was ahead of his time in so many ways: taking up medical marijuana and needle exchange long before society at large saw their value; infusing the concepts of prevention and rehabilitation into corrections policy; fighting to maintain world-class public education.

He legislated with vision and patience, always with passion and utterly without fear. And he never stopped caring, even after he was termed out of office in 2004.

In one of our occasional meetings, he gave me a list of 20 questions for the 2010 gubernatorial candidates. Most were right on point to the concrete issues Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman were avoiding. But Vasconcellos could not resist including this one: "Do you believe humans arrive in life tending toward the bad and requiring 'taming' or tending toward the good?"

"Do you really expect me to ask that at an editorial board meeting?" I wondered aloud.

He just smiled, with that trademark glint in his eyes. Of course he did.